@LegalGamerUK

Video Games Lawyer @WigginLLP

 London, England
wiggin.co.uk/people/peter-lewin/
Joined November 2014
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I've been working with indie studios as a games lawyer for nearly a decade. For anyone taking recent events as a chance to start up their own studio, I hope these legal tips help. Good luck out there!
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Pete Lewin retweeted
Mike Rose@RaveofRavendaleJun 19
We just launched a video game!! 📑📑📑 Thank You For Your Application is an interview game, where you screen resumes according to company requirements and issuing the appropriate thank you letters. Available now on Steam! RTs are MASSIVELY appreciated <3
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PUBLISHER RECOUP Devs often ask me whether it’s better to take a publishing deal where the pub can recoup its costs but it takes a lower %, or no recoup but the publisher takes a higher %. The answer: it depends how well you think your game will do. Let’s crunch some numbers.
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Don’t get me wrong - a game generating $6m in revenue (approx $8.5m pre platforms / taxes - or 420k copies of a $20 game) is a hit, and not something anyone can bank on.
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But I mention this is because you sometimes see people talking in absolutes about deal terms - never agree to this, this is always better than that - which is rarely true in gamdev.
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ROBLOX DEALS - "I'll sell you 20% of my game" Within the UGC space, this kind of deal terminology is super common. To a lawyer, it's fraught with ambiguity. Here's a few different things it could mean:
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This can result in strange outcomes which neither party really expects - like each joint owner being able to do whatever it wants with the IP without the other's consent.
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This is just a few ways that Roblox deals can be structured. It's critical though that devs are clear on what they mean when they are offering others a % in their games, and that this is properly reflected in their contracts.
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I don't have any insider info here, but I can wager a guess it relates to two major problems I see in indie publishing deals far too often:
PC Gamer
@pcgamerApr 29
Slay the Spire 2 devs weren't going to make a sequel, but then the publisher handling the first game's ports shut down and things got 'very murky' pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/…

Slay the Spire 2 devs weren't going to make a sequel, but then the publisher handling the first...

"I guess we were a little naïve."

pcgamer.com
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(2) the developer is rarely given practical access to the underlying code / assets for the ports so that they can maintain those moving forwards. One addresses the legal side, the other the practical. Having both is crucial.
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And the time to be thinking about this isn't when things are going wrong - it's from the start of the relationship (or at least when the parties first start discussing ports). So please, indie devs and publishers - think about this, and document it in your agreements 🙏
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